The subject disclosed herein relates to a navigation service for an electric vehicle.
Recently, automobile manufacturers are actively engaged in the development and marketing of an electric vehicle (EV, with any number of wheels) that travels using electric power stored in-vehicle batteries. Unlike a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle, an electric vehicle does not use fossil fuel. In addition, an electric vehicle can use a power generation method, such as atomic power generation or solar energy generation, that emits less carbon dioxide. Therefore, switching from a gasoline-powered vehicle to an electric vehicle is an effective countermeasure against global warming and fossil fuel exhaustion. This prompts the governments of various nations of the world, including Japan, Europe, and America, to adopt tax reduction systems or subsidy systems for the diffusion of electric vehicles.
However, the distance (cruising range) over which an electric vehicle can travel with one charging of the batteries is about 200 km that is shorter than that of a gasoline-power vehicle. This means that the driver of an electric vehicle must visit charging stations, which correspond to the gas stations of a gasoline-power vehicle, more frequently when traveling long distances.
Charging stations are classified roughly into two types: normal charging station and rapid charging station. Although widely available, a normal charging station requires four to eight hours for one charging. Therefore, a normal charging station is unsuitable for a charging facility that is used away from home. On the other hand, though one charging requires only 30 minutes, a rapid charging station is not widely used today because it requires a special facility that is very expensive.
For the reasons described above, an electric vehicle user, who is planning to travel to a distant location, must be careful about the remaining battery capacity and the charging station locations during traveling. These worries may prevent an electric vehicle from becoming popular.
To solve these problems, efforts are being made to increase the capacity of the in-vehicle batteries and to increase the number of charging facilities. At the same time, to compensate for the shortcomings described above, the study has been conducted on the telematics service that works with a navigation system mounted in an electric vehicle.
For example, JP-A-2012-211888 proposes a terminal that informs the user about the requirement of charging and the charging stations available on a route. More specifically, this terminal displays a bar graph, the left end of which corresponds to the current position and which has a length corresponding to the maximum battery charging capacity, for displaying the battery remaining capacity of the electric vehicle. On this bar graph, the terminal displays the current remaining battery capacity, the battery capacity required to reach the destination, the shortage of battery capacity that is the difference the two, and the charging stations to which the vehicle can reach with the current remaining battery capacity (Paragraphs 0051 to 0055).